ATLANTA—ESPN college basketball reporter Andy Katz stopped Kentucky coach John Calipari just after the first half ended, right near the midcourt stripe. As is custom in the network’s telecasts, Katz asked about the first 20 minutes of the Wildcats’ game against No. 9 Duke.

“John, how do you tighten up your defense, especially on the interior, to stop their dribble penetration?”

Calipari answered as only he would. He said his team’s post defense was hurting the team and that the team allowed a few too many 3s.

“But for us to be in this situation, I’m happy,” he said. “We’ve got a little bit of foul trouble, not much. ... They’re flopping all over the place. In the NBA, they’d all be suspended.”

Although Calipari seemed to snicker when he said it—and in the postgame press conference he claimed to be joking—in a sound-bite world it was a heck of a sound bite. Calipari, though, was off on the details. Floppers in the NBA now get fined, not suspended.

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski’s retort, when asked about the episode in his postgame news conference, was equally pointed.

“He has a right to say whatever he wants. I thought we took some amazing charges, and I thought we had taken a couple more,” Krzyzewski said. “There’s a difference between a charge and a flop. A flop means you don’t take any contact. I would hope that anybody who watched the game would say that our kids really played outstanding defense and took charges.